The present invention relates to a process control system and a process control method. More specifically, the invention relates to a process control system that controls manufacturing and distribution processes of manufactured product items and that is suitable for collecting and structuring history records for manufacturing and distribution processes and searching and outputting traceability information.
Conventionally, control of history records for manufacturing processes has been emphasized in order to improve the quality of manufactured product items. More specifically, the security and quality of product items are guaranteed by providing traceability information such as information indicating what a product item (hereinafter, an item involved in manufacturing and distribution is referred to merely as a “product item”) is made of (or made from), information indicating which route(s) a product item has passed through, information indicating what method(s) a product item has been treated by. In addition, if a problem arises with respect to a product item, such traceability information would be useful.
A system for controlling history records for manufacturing processes using a computer system is described in the U.S. Pat. No. 3060984. In this patent document, when registering history record information, a previous process is identified by referring to a manufacturing process definition table and a history number for the present process is registered in the process control table of the previous process. After the history record information is stored, history records in the process control table are coupled together in the order of the processes, and a process history record table is generated and output. If the process history record table is viewed, it is possible to easily identify history records for manufacturing processes on the basis of each product.
In the abovementioned conventional technique, a process control table is defined for each product, and process history record tables coupled based on process batch numbers are generated based on the process control information.
However, with respect to controlling manufacturing processes, there are many cases where collection of history record information is not complete. For example, in some cases, history records may not registered completely for the reason that time required to complete registration of history records is varied depending on the processes, or some history records may be lacking. In those situations, the history records may not be structured, or may be placed without necessary history records as if the lacking history records did not originally exist. Controlling the history records for the processes cannot be sufficiently performed.
The present invention was made to solve the abovementioned problems of the conventional technique, and an object of the present invention is to provide a process control system which is user-friendly and facilitates to control history records by improving traceability of the history records related to manufactured product items through estimation of manufacturing history records even when collection of history record information is not complete.